With the dust still settling from protests at Columbia University, former and current students gathered last week to celebrate the career of Rashid Khalidi, one of the West’s most prominent champions of Palestine. Some speakers at the two-day retirement conference drew a line between Khalidi’s scholarship and the student protest movement, noting that the now-shuttered Columbia encampments included those who had studied under the Middle East history professor. But Khalidi, whose latest book on Palestine has been a best-seller since October, said his work has at most played a small role in the u…